HP

Great House
History Term Test

Sideka ‘Keys’ Resalsingh-Dabiedeen

11/5/2020
1)

The Big House was a two-story house; white like most houses during that time. On the north side of the
Big House sat a great big barn, where all the stock and stuff that was raised was kept. Off to the
southwest of the barn, west of the Big House, set about five or six log houses. It was also placed on a hill
so that they can look over the plantations and they would often be seen with a spy glass overlooking the
other buildings on the plantations. The big house or commonly known as the great house was notably
white In Colour. Laborers on the plantation could be seen with a spy glass from the top of the hill.

However on the more than 46,000 plantations that were in operation in 1860, the work done beyond
the Big House was more important than the mansions. There, at the margins of the planters' domains,
lived almost two and a half million slaves in the quarters. Beyond the Big House there existed another
social domain, one that is often overlooked. This exhibit explores, in some detail, the slaves' side of the
plantation.

Key building types and their distinctive arrangements are identified. Subsequent sections then move
progressively deeper into the experiences of slave life. First, the range of slave tasks is reviewed.
Cooking and other domestic chores are depicted along with some of the routines required in the raising
of cotton, rice, livestock, and sugar. Next the domestic conditions are examined. Ranging from miserable
hovels made with rough logs to well-built cabins framed with milled timber, slave quarters were the
definitive feature of any antebellum plantation. They also constituted the sites where slave communities
would develop.

Here, black talents were displayed in many ways, and various skills such as carpentry, carving,
blacksmithing, spinning, weaving, sewing, or tanning were used by slaves to make life in the quarters
more acceptable. Often, slaves worked in their quarters just as hard as they worked in the fields but in
the quarters the results of their labor belonged to them alone. Other talents in various performing arts
including music, dance, and narration brought measures of joy to an otherwise bleak existence. Finally,
the rise of a distinctive black liturgy is presented, a mode of worship marked by inspirational preaching,
emotional singing, and much appreciated messages of liberation and deliverance.
2)

The first footman was the designation given to the highest-ranking servant of this class in a given
household. The first footman would serve as deputy butler and act as butler in the latter's absence,
although some larger houses also had an under-butler above the first footman.

In a larger household, various footmen might be assigned specific duties (for which there might be a
traditional sequence), such as the silver specialist. Usually the footmen performed a range of duties
which included serving meals, opening and closing doors, carrying heavy items, or moving furniture for
the housemaid to clean behind. The footmen might also double as valets, especially for visiting guests.

Male servants were paid more than female servants, and footmen were something of a luxury and
therefore a status symbol even among the servant-employing classes. They performed a less essential
role than the cook, maid or even butler, and were part only of the grandest households. Since a footman
was for show as much as for use, a tall footman was more highly prized than a short one, and good
looks, including well-turned legs, which were shown off by the traditional footman's dress of stockings
worn below knee breeches, were an advantage. Footmen were expected to be unmarried and tended to
be relatively young; they might, however, progress to other posts, notably that of butler. One 19th-
century footman, William Tayler, kept a diary which has been published. He was, in fact, married; but
kept his marriage secret from his employers and visited his family only on his days off.

Once a commonly employed servant in great houses, footmen became much rarer after World War I as
fewer households could by then afford retinues of servants and retainers. The position is now virtually a
historic one although servants with this designation are still employed in the British Royal Household,
wearing a distinctive scarlet livery on state occasions.
3)

Plantations had been used with great effect long before the Europeans settled in the Americas. Sugar
cane plantations, for example, had thrived around the Mediterranean in the late middle Ages, supplying
an expensive sweetener for Europe's élites. So when European merchants and adventurers began to sail
and trade around the Atlantic, they took the plantation model with them and transplanted it into a
string of new settlements above all, in sugar.

Wherever we look, slavery and plantations went hand in hand. The latter's purpose was to extract the
best return from both labor and land. But the varying requirements of crops meant that slave labor was
organized differently depending on what was grown.

Working in sugar was especially harsh. Planters organized slaves around a gang system. The toughest
work – planting, manuring, and cane-cutting – fell to the strongest and healthiest. Other, less physically
demanding tasks were handled by gangs of less robust, younger or older slaves. Even the very young and
the old were put to work: driving away birds, cleaning and guarding. From their early years until the
onset of old age and infirmity, sugar slaves had to work. Sugar plantations also had factories that
converted the harvested sugar cane into raw sugar and then into rum.